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Stuhec emulates Maze, historic ski bronze for Vonn

Stuhec timed 1min 32.85sec down the 2.6km-long Engiadina course to emulate the feat of retired former teammate Tina Maze.

Slovenia's Ilka Stuhec reacts in the finish area of the women's downhill race at the 2017 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in St Moritz on February 12, 2017

Stuhec, with four World Cup victories to her name this season (three downhill and one super-G), timed 1min 32.85sec down the 2.6km-long Engiadina course to emulate the feat of retired former teammate Tina Maze two years ago in Beaver Creek.

"I knew it was possible, but still to stand as the world champion here is unreal to me," said Stuhec.

"Words can’t express what this means. I think the reality will sink in a little later."

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Unheralded Austrian Stephanie Venier took silver - just her second podium, at 0.40sec, while Vonn made history when she claimed bronze (+0.45), her seventh world medal.

Vonn, the 2009 world downhill champion, showed all her experience to produce a strong bottom section to secure third place and become the oldest medallist, at the age of 32 years and 117 days, in any women's event at the World Ski Championships. The previous record was held by Austrian Anita Wachter when she won giant slalom bronze in 1999.

"It's amazing," said Vonn, coming back from a broken right humerus that has left her such limited grip in her hand that she has it bound by tape onto her pole.

"It's the happiest I've ever been to be in third place! Considering my preparation, my hand and my arm, it feels like a gold medal.

"I'm the oldest female medallist and that's the best news I've heard all day. Today was not bad for an old lady, I'm going to go have some champagne."

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Hitting speeds of 80kph within four seconds of leaving the start gate and motorway-coasting maximums of 125.6kph, the race was held in ideal conditions with none of the fog that had seen the men's downhill on Saturday rescheduled to run after the women's.

Stuhec had shown her mettle down the course by topping two of the training sessions and finishing second in the downhill section of the combined, in which she fluffed by crashing out of the slalom six gates in.

She started no differently Sunday, attacking the downhill from the off, running with start number seven.

Sheer speed allied with technical mastery of the tricky, turny part of the bottom section of the slope guaranteed that the 26-year-old Slovene topped the podium to carry on Maze's legacy.

Goggia's costly mistake

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For a terrible mistake two gates from the finish line, Italian Sofia Goggia, a remarkable nine-time World Cup podium finisher this season, would also have been on the podium here.

She eventually missed it by just seven-hundredths, capping a couple of miserable days for the Italian who was first after the combined downhill but bombed out of the slalom after just three gates.

"Being fourth in the world champs is nothing," lamented Goggia.

"It's hard to accept with the mistake I made because I was pretty fast before. It hurts bad."

Austrian Nicole Schmidhofer failed to live up to her billing after winning the super-G. Starting with bib number one, she came in 16th, 1.76sec off the pace, while silver medallist in that discipline, Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein, was 10th (+1.18).

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The race unfortunately had two high-profile absentees in the shape of Austrian Anna Veith and home star Lara Gut, whose mouth-watering head-to-head with Stuhec and Vonn had been touted as one of the stand-outs of the worlds held high in the picturesque Engadin mountains.

Gut was ruled out for the season after suffering a bad knee injury in training for the slalom section of Friday's alpine combined event, a cruel blow for the Swiss team for whom the 25-year-old has become a standard bearer, especially in the speed events.

Veith pulled out of the downhill saying she was not ready in her comeback from a knee injury.

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